


Halfway Down the Road to Lethe

by voodoochild



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV), Penny Dreadful (TV), She - H. Rider Haggard
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Canon Backstory, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Evelyn really is an evil sorceress, Gen, Immortality, Non Canonical Immortal, Opium, Recreational Drug Use, Undead, World War I, and Malcolm totally is Allan Quatermain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 04:12:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2799113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1917, and Passchendaele is about to blow up. Immortality and undeath seems to be on the schedule as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Halfway Down the Road to Lethe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [originally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/gifts).



> \- Title from Robert Graves' "Escape".  
> \- Opening quote from John Keats' "Ode to a Nightengale", which is, of course, a very Malcolm poem.  
> \- Love to E1 & E2 for the sounding-board and cheerleading, as well as Brigdh for the extremely speedy and thorough beta.  
> \- In Peaky canon, this is 1917 and a Tommy who's still a Sergeant Major. He's blown up Schwabenhohe, but Vimy Ridge went quite a great deal differently.  
> \- In Penny canon, Malcolm has decided to play Quatermain to Evelyn's Ayesha (because he *is*), and they've been immortal-ing around Europe for the past couple decades.  
> \- Author's Note: I am not a person of Romany descent, but Thomas Shelby and his family are Romanichal-Irish, and frequently use the g-slur to describe themselves. It is used in this story solely to keep to established canon, and neither I nor this story support any use of the word by non-Romany. I have tried to do as much research as possible, but if I have made any mistakes, mea maxima culpa.

_My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains_  
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,  
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains  
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk 

***

Immortality makes you maudlin, Malcolm finds.

Of course, it took becoming immortal himself to understand that, living so long, there is so little left to experience. In the first rush of it, you burn through vice after vice, sin after sin. Push your body and soul to the limit, and he'd been no exception. He had believed Africa would have prepared him - he is no stranger to depravity or evil - and yet, after his transformation, he had sought out ever more awful vices.

Sex turned to opiates. Opiates turned to control. Control turned to murder.

After the first three decades of this new life of his, he finds he's beginning to settle. She'd told him so. 

She.

She who walks the night. She who bathes in the pillar of fire. She who must be obeyed.

When he was Malcolm Murray, he'd known Her as Evelyn Poole. She'd been a charlatan and spiritualist, playing the followers of Amun-Ra and Amunet as easily as She bilked the wealthy out of their money. He'll never know what She saw in him, only that he noticed a beguiling gleam in Her eyes, and a challenge to follow Her as far as he dared. He followed Her all the way back to Africa, to Kor, the city of legend he'd once thought impossible.

Followed Her through the fire and walked out a new man. Vital and strong as he'd been in his youth, but with the appearance of age that grants him instant respect throughout the Empire - or what's left of it after this Great War. A new kind of war for a new time - he'd walked the battlefields of France and been equal parts fascinated and horrified. Such _destruction_ men were now capable of, such horror, new innovations and willingness to wage on a large scale the total war that he'd once practiced on a small scale.

But everything wears on him in a way it never did when he was mortal. Glory turns to banality, pleasure to boredom, and even She no longer holds the allure for him She once did.

It's only a matter of time before he leaves Her - She knows, doesn't begrudge him because he's played his part, helped Her become what She was meant to be - and he's been thinking of it more and more. England holds nothing for him: Vanessa is long married and settled with her pet beast, Mr. Chandler; Victor is dead and gone many years now; Mina has been lost to him dozens of times over, and he hasn't the heart to try again. 

France is a pleasant diversion. She had wanted to see Paris with these new eyes of Hers, he'd played merry hell with some of the panzer divisions over in Ypres. Still, it hadn't done a damned thing to chase the sensation of perpetually looking down the barrel of a gun and knowing even if it fired, he wouldn't be hurt.

He knows. He's tried.

***

The opium dens of Passchendaele are not like their counterparts in Limehouse or Montmartre. They are bare-bones, but they are sufficient for his purposes, and he slides quite a large amount of money to the proprietor for a private room and a few clean cots. He does not expect to be so rudely interrupted by a young man in Warwickshire Rifles uniform, insignia designating him a Sergeant Major - and the boy is all of twenty-five if he's a day, Malcolm swears they're simply giving bayonets to infants now - stumbling into his room. 

Malcolm clears his throat, exhaling a puff of smoke, and the boy immediately snaps a salute off. There's an insolence about it that simultaneously intrigues Malcolm and makes him itch to backhand the boy for his clear lack of respect. He returns the salute, though he's not actually part of the British Army any longer. His commission for the Boer had died with the name Malcolm Murray - despite that, he continues to exploit it. A posh accent, a knighthood, and a commission of Colonel, the year granted strategically altered, will get you into all sorts of places.

"Beg your pardon, sir," the boy says, and the Brum in his voice is thick enough to cut with a knife. Startlingly blue eyes, a pallor to his skin that speaks of time underground and not in a trench. "Didn't know the room was taken. Monseiur Bardot usually saves it for me and my brothers."

When Malcolm bathed in the fire at Kor, he was granted two gifts - near-immortality (as She says, _"nothing outlasts Death, love, not even me, but we can cheat it for a while"_ ) and the extension of Her power to force obedience. He wishes he'd thought to request an ability like to Sembene's - to glimpse the soul of a man, all he has been and might be, and thus know his true nature - because he should like it at this moment. This boy must be special, for fate to have brought him to Malcolm.

He gestures to the pallet across from him, and the young man sits as if dazed. "Truth be told," Malcolm says, picking up the tin box of poppy, "I did not expect to be here. This is an indulgence I do not allow myself often, but when I do, I require privacy. Stay, if this is your usual room."

A servant knocks on the door, and the boy speaks a few words in French - requests for a gram of opium, lamp and pipe - but switches to another language with a glance at Malcolm. He fishes a few coins from his breast pocket, continues in the second language, and the servant retires after taking the coin. 

"It isn't often I come across a language I do not recognize," Malcolm says, heating his own portion of the poppy. When the boy says nothing, Malcolm shrugs and continues, keeping the boy only in the edge of his gaze. " _Français, par exemple, est simple à prendre la parole. Kiswahili, kwa upande mwingine, ni vigumu zaidi. Hindustani bahut mushkil sikhana tha, punjabi bhasha bhi. Ér zhōngguó shì dìyù xuéxí._ But the language you spoke is one I have not heard before."

"Who are you?" the boy asks, startled. If he'd a gun on him, Malcolm would bet he'd be edging his hand toward it. 

He puts the pipe down and extends his hand. "The name and rank you would find on any legal documentation is not mine. My given name, long ago, was Malcolm. Please call me that, if you would."

And he doesn't mean to influence the boy, not overtly, but the power sometimes chooses when to make itself known. The boy takes his hand in a surprisingly firm grip, blue eyes bright in the lamplight, and hesitates only a moment before introducing himself. 

"Thomas Shelby, Warwickshire Rifles. A pleasure, Malcolm." 

He leans back, toeing off his boots and shedding his jacket when the servant comes back in with the requested items as well as a bottle of half-decent whiskey. Readies the pipe, and he slips an extra coin into the servant's hand, with a few more words in that language, turning back to Malcolm with a small smile on his face. 

"You have heard this language spoken, you know. Just didn't pay attention. Why should a - mmm, with that accent, cane, and style of dress - baronet, at least, recognize the language of gypsies?" 

His expression must betray him, since Thomas bursts into laughter. Wry and mocking, and he's again tempted to strike the wretch, but he stays his hand. So, a Brummie boy of Irish ancestry (with a surname like Shelby) and gypsy stock. He must be something, and there's the haze of destiny about him. She'd taught him to see it, after Kor, so he'd know the Potential in a human. Potentials can be great allies or great enemies, and he wonders which Thomas Shelby will become.

"Well, then, Thomas," Malcolm says reluctantly. "It seems you have me pinpointed. Yes, I held a knighthood, but I wasn't born a baronet. Go on, tell my fortune."

It was the wrong impulse.

The boy's out of his seat and pressing a knife to Malcolm's throat before Malcolm can blink. Flicks his gaze up to Thomas, the steel pricking at his skin, and bares his teeth in a grin.

"Have I offended?" he says mildly, and Thomas presses the blade a hair closer. 

"You and your knighthood can get fucked if you think you'll get anything like that out of me. I don't tell fortunes and I won't fix your fucking silver. Or steal it, for that matter."

Malcolm allows him to press the blade only a shade harder, then brings his hand up to calmly lift it away from his skin. He barely needs to think about using his influence anymore, and Thomas finds himself obeying with a startled look. "I didn't think you would," Malcolm says. Pushes, with his influence, and Thomas edges back away from Malcolm, skitters back to the opposite cot. "A poor jest, then. Before you ask questions to which I'm going to hazard you're not going to want an answer to - _yes_. This is related to that very strange, very terrifying thing that happened to you. We could simply leave it at that."

Thousand-meter stare, he's beginning to see it on every soldier he encounters, but this stare is colder than usual. Well, he supposes that's what you get when you meet death and walk out the other side, quite literally.

"Vimy fucking Ridge," Thomas intones, and grabs for the whiskey bottle. He takes a drink, and to Malcolm's astonishment, it doesn't just go straight through him. The boy doesn't realize he's being stared at, still caught up in remembering the battle. "We were kicking clay, Malcolm - you know what that is?"

"I do. You're a tunneller."

Thomas coughs out a soft laugh. "And you don't even make it sound like a curse. Yeah, I'm a tunneller. The 179th. Was a long night, kicking and kicking and then waiting because the fucking Germans were kicking back and we didn't want the entire network to blow. My mate Danny - we call him Danny Whizzbang because he's like a fucking artillery shell, you point him at the Huns and tell him to go bang, and nothing's left when he's done - Danny, he kicked too hard. And a whole squadron of Huns start pouring out of that hole. At least . . . we thought they were Huns. Don't fucking know _what_ they were."

Malcolm takes the tin of opium out of Thomas's hands - the boy doesn't even know he's shaking, his voice is steady - and begins to roll a ball, talking while he does it. "They're called nachzehrer, it means "devourer of energy". Haven't you noticed how tired you always are, and can't sleep?"

"Life of a soldier," he says, tightly, but Malcolm can see he doesn't truly believe what he says.

"More than trench energy, boy. Nachzehrer are born of accidental death - quite like your German tunnelers - and evil in one's past. They feed on the energy of their victims, sometimes on themselves, which is a nasty business all around. That's why you didn't know what they were. Flesh rotting off the bone and yet still walking, stronger than a team of oxen and yet brittle to the touch?"

"Yes. And that's-?" Thomas stops himself, shaking his head. Refusing to believe. Malcolm finishes the opium ball, presses it into the notch of the pipe, and hands it over. It takes Thomas two tries to get the lamp lit, another three to inhale without coughing, but he's stopped shaking by the fourth breath. "That's what I am now, isn't it?"

Malcolm takes a breath, because that _is_ the question.

***

He considers lying to the boy. Calling him nachzehrer and having that be the end of it. But there is a vitality to Thomas, a light in his eyes that Malcolm thought impossible in the undead. Not the fire that vampires have, not the brutality of a beast of Mr. Chandler's ilk, but a pure light that is usually reserved for the living. 

What was it Mr. Carroll's children's book said? Curiouser and curiouser.

"Truth, Sergeant Major?" he asks.

A dazed, amused glance from Thomas. "Why stop now? You're the only person I've ever met who has the first clue what's happening to me. Go on. What am I?"

Malcolm motions toward the whiskey bottle on the table between them, and begrudgingly, Thomas pushes it over. There are no glasses in this type of establishment, and he takes a swig, relishing the cheap-whiskey burn.

"You're not a nachzehrer, considering Vimy Ridge was months ago and you haven't started eating your own flesh. Other than that - I haven't seen anything like you before." Anticipating Thomas's next question, he hands the whiskey back over. The boy will need it. "You know you've been dead since that night under Vimy Ridge, don't you?"

"Yeah," Thomas says, throwing back a good quarter of the bottle. "Yeah, I know."

"You don't have the decay a nachzehrer does. Or the bloodthirst of a vampire or beast." Malcolm pauses, considers a moment. It does no harm to give him the name. "An educated man might call you Revenant, meaning any once-living thing which has risen from the dead in corporeal form. You could try investigating that. But I have encountered a great many strange and curious things in my travels, and honestly, I don't know what you are."

"You've no idea?"

Malcolm sighs. He'd like to leave the boy to his own devices, doesn't need to get involved with puzzling undead soldiers who have mucked up the natural order of these kinds of things, but She's given him his instructions. He takes out his notebook from his breast pocket and scribbles down an address. "I'm not without resources, Mr. Shelby. This address is my residence in Paris. On your next leave, pay me a call. The man at the door will be named Sembene, and he may have some of the answers you seek."

Thomas gives him an impressive stare of disbelief, one that would have a more mortal creature than Malcolm wondering if the legends of gypsy curses were true. "And who is this Sembene?"

"My companion. We met in Africa, during the Zulu campaign." Thomas is quiet, but Malcolm can see him doing the mathematics in his head. "A finer warrior and scholar I have never seen. He can tell you many things, if you will listen." Malcolm pauses, thinks better of it, but writes a second address below the first. "Grandage Place, if need be, can serve as a refuge for those who are lost. I'll thank you not to allow either address to fall into anyone else's hands but your own."

"Who would I tell?" Thomas says insouciantly.

Kor returned all of Malcolm's speed and strength from his younger years, and he has the blade of his walking-stick pointed directly at Thomas Shelby's heart. Killing-blow, enough of one to stop a master vampire in its tracks, and it should be more than sufficient to dispatch the young Sergeant Major.

"Hear this, Revenant. The sole reason I would consider allowing you anywhere near that home and the people in it is that I could stop you in your tracks with a single thought. Don't force me to test the range of my abilities, for I promise you, you will fail."

A flick of his gaze to the blade pointed at his chest, then back up to Malcolm. "The knife?" Malcolm nods. "You never answered - _what_ are you?"

It must be showing, his own lack-of-humanity, and he can't help but smile grimly. "Many things. Once, I was a soldier in the Boer. I've been to war too, boy, saluted and took orders and lead men to their deaths. And then an explorer of the dark continent. Christ, the sunrise over Tanganyika, the fish from Port Sadani in the Soudan, the waters of the Nile itself . . ." And it pains him, because Africa is where he lost Peter, and Africa is where he was when he should have been with Mina. Chokes the words out, because he won't allow this boy to see such weakness. "A husband and father too. And then I became more. She made me more. Stronger, more powerful. A man to whom all others bend the knee, and I kneel only for Her."

Thomas grins, sharp and wicked, and edges himself back onto the cot, away from Malcolm's blade. "Lot of ways to kneel," he remarks, and Malcolm laughs in spite of himself.

"And doesn't She know it." Sheathes the swordstick, and regards Thomas again. "I know that look, boy. Don't seek Her out. No matter how curious you are. She makes the most powerful sorcerers look like squabbling children, and that's if She likes you - it's possible She'd kill you entirely out of boredom. Finding and keeping servants who neither offend nor intrigue Her is tiring, really."

"Couldn't sympathize," Thomas drawls, reaching for his pipe again, inhaling slow and measured. "I was born in a barn. Never seen a servant in my life, only heard that you rich folk have them." 

He grits his teeth, ignores the snide tone in the boy's voice, and gathers his things. His train to Paris leaves in 20 minutes, and it wouldn't do to keep Her waiting. Places his hat on his head, tips it in farewell to Thomas. He's about to say his farewells when the door opens, two young men entering the room.

The elder's a lieutenant, same sharp blue eyes as Thomas on the cot opposite him, moustache stained with whiskey that emanates from a cloud around him. An accomplished drunk, one in the trenches, and the younger one by his side is actually the taller. Chewing on a toothpick, echoing bray of a laugh, and they stop cold when they catch sight of Malcolm.

The younger one speaks - younger than Thomas, Christ, the boy's not twenty yet - in the gypsy language. _"So keres?"_

 _"Fatche doshman,"_ Thomas responds, smoke seeping from between his lips, and that same malevolent life in his eyes. 

_"Gadjo?"_

_"Hai."_ Laughs, softly, and flicks his eyes over to Malcolm. "Told you I had brothers."

"You did," Malcolm agrees. Tips his hat to them. "Pleasure, gentlemen. Remember that information I gave you, Sergeant Major."

***

She's waiting in the library for him, veiled and dressed. Christ, something must be wrong if She's wearing clothes this late at night.

"A Revenant, Malcolm? And you _let him go_?"

He sighs, begins shedding his coat and boots, jacket and waistcoat. "You can't conscript every dead thing in the world to your cause. Besides, he's already fighting a war."

Her eyebrow ticks up, tiny frame ramrod-straight in Her corset and dress. He attempts to pull Her to him, kiss Her hello, but She deftly sidesteps him, fixing him with a glare. "I gave you rather explicit instructions, did I not?"

"I'm not your servant, Evelyn-"

"You know that isn't my name."

"You know I don't care." Sometimes he glories in their dance - push-pull of seduction and power and control - and sometimes, like now, when his head's full of opium and he's wondering what more there could be to this un-life, he wishes She'd left him to die. "He's a boy. A soldier. Let him alone."

The corner of Her mouth tics up. He thinks it's the truest smile She possesses. 

"You sentimental old fool," She hisses, heels clicking on the marble floor. "You know he's a Potential. You've seen what happens when we leave them be. I could reopen that scar on your chest to remind you."

Exhaustion beats behind his temples - hours on a train, then a taxi to their flat - and he wonders what the breaking point's going to be. When they'll decide they're of no more use to each other and finally leave each other for good. Because when it's good, it's good; whole weeks in bed, indulging themselves in every vice they can conceive, Her pleasure-drunk smile that lights up the room. But when it's bad, it's awful. Hours like centuries, waiting to see if this will be the moment he'll die for good.

"This one won't be for chasing and capturing, my dear. Too smart for his own good, and quite dangerous to boot. Show some of that patience . . . let him come to us, when the time is right. When we need him."

She's quiet for a moment. Silent as the proverbial grave. 

"And if he doesn't?"

"I've already influenced him. If you Called to him? Not a power on earth could keep him away. And it gets better . . ."

She allows him to pull Her down to the chaise, embrace Her, and She tucks her head under his chin like the silly human girl She never was. "Yes?" She asks, "go on."

He grins against Her hair. "He's got a family. Strong enough of a connection to them to turn him Revenant. We could use that, don't you think?" She makes a sound of assent, and he continues, fingers playing over the delicate bones of Her wrist. "Gypsy-Irish. And they breed horses. Couldn't have done better if you'd formed them from our very wishes."

Not ten years later, when what they've been dreading comes to pass, he'll wonder if She had.

**Author's Note:**

>  _"Français, par exemple, est simple à prendre la parole."_ = French, for example, is simple to speak.  
>  _"Kiswahili, kwa upande mwingine, ni vigumu zaidi."_ = Swahili, on the other hand, is more difficult.  
>  _"Hindustani bahut mushkil sikhana tha, punjabi bhasha bhi."_ = Hindi was very difficult, so was the Punjabi dialect.  
>  _"Ér zhōngguó shì dìyù xuéxí."_ = And Chinese was hell to learn.  
>  _"So keres?"_ = What are you doing?  
>  _"Fatche doshman."_ = Making an enemy.  
>  _"Gadjo?"_ = a non-Romany person  
>  _"Hai."_ = Yes.
> 
> Selected bibliography:  
> http://www.monstropedia.org/index.php?title=Revenant  
> http://www.academia.edu/1515462/Wraiths_Revenants_and_Ritual_in_Medieval_Culture  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vimy_Ridge  
> http://www2.arnes.si/~eusmith/Romany/glossary.html  
> http://www.wordgumbo.com/ie/ini/rom/rom.htm  
> http://www.pdfbooks.co.za/library/GEORGE_BORROW/GEORGE_BORROW-GYPSY_DICTIONARY_mobile.pdf
> 
> (Incidentally, Santa is not promising anything, but there could quite easily be more of this story. It's rather addictive, and there is a natural point to come in at with the Dracula story.)


End file.
